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There are palm trees in purgatory. He walks by them with­out paying much at­tention. Here, each is just an­oth­er pixel on a postcard disguised as par­adise. Mike Leach stops at a wood­en shack for a Cuban coffee. "What was I talking about?" he asks.

Doesn't mat­ter. He hops top­ics like lily pads. The Cuban caffeine only makes mat­ters worse. The need for a col­lege playoff system. Un­employ­ment. Hunt­ing pigs. Sarah Palin. Eating fast food in Japan. The Uni­versity of Mary­land.

"Excuse me," says a woman with a French ac­cent. Leach is rec­ognized of­ten down here, which isn't too surpris­ing. Before he was ousted as Texas Tech's head football coach, his Red Raiders teams won 84 games in 10 seasons, appeared in a bowl game each year and fea­tured one of col­lege football's most exciting offens­es. His star was on the rise. He was pro­filed on CBS's "60 Minutes," had a cameo on NBC's "Friday Night Lights." Leach was go­ing places.

"I'm sorry, where is Ernest Hem­ingway's house?" the woman asks.

"You go — it's about 10 blocks down. If you see the light­house, it's right across the street from the light­house," he says. "Ten blocks. Brick wall around it."

Well, not ev­eryone rec­ognizes him. This is purgatory af­ter all. This is the place an innovative football coach escapes to be­tween jobs. Leach left Texas Tech under a cloud of con­tro­ver­sy. He had been a cowboy in West Texas, unique among football coaches for his quirk­i­ness, his coach­ing style and his success.

Until the accu­sa­tion. A player said the coach locked him in a dark clos­et. Leach was run out of Lubbock, branded like a steer. A man who prided him­self on be­ing an ed­ucator suddenly came to rep­resent all that was wrong with the modern-day coach.

Now, while the courts sort out the details, he's untouch­able. School pres­idents are scared to hire a man who's si­multane­ously battling two gi­ants — su­ing not only his pre­vi­ous employer but also the nation's largest sports network.

The Uni­versity of Mary­land tried. School admin­istrators danced briefly with Leach in December and were on the verge of hiring him to replace Ralph Friedgen, but they got cold feet.

"I don't have any con­trol over it," Leach says of his coach­ing prospects. "I just worry about what I can con­trol."

So Leach, 50, is in Key West, the south­ernmost spot in the con­tiguous United States. Wait­ing. Trying to keep busy. On days when the wa­ter's warm, he swims in the ocean. He goes to his son's baseball games. He fishes offshore ev­ery few weeks. And on week­ends, he flies all over. Sometimes for fun, sometimes for football, sometimes to network. Sometimes to re­m­ind oth­ers he's still a football coach. Oth­er times to re­m­ind him­self.

'Kind of an obvi­ous choice'

You can rollerblade in purgatory, too. You've got to get around somehow, right? When Leach was in Lubbock, the uni­versity paid for his fam­ily's two cars, which he lost when the school fired him in December 2009.

They weren't sure what to do or where to go, but the Leaches knew they needed to catch their breath. They'd bought a vacation home in Key West five months earli­er and decided it was time for a vacation.

"It was like: 'What are we go­ing to do? Go back to Lubbock?' " said Sharon Leach, his wife of 29 years. "Do we stay? Once we got down here, it was kind of an obvi­ous choice."

They packed for eight days and haven't left. Leach briefly returned to West Texas, shipped eight boxes to Key West and put the rest of their Lubbock lives into stor­age.

"You feel like you're always on vacation because you're living in a vacation par­adise," Sharon says. "You just have to re­alize that re­ally this is a place where you're still living your life, the kids are in school, there's still a rou­tine."

For Leach, it's per­fect. The is­land is only four miles long and two miles wide, but it's packed with char­ac­ters. From Jimmy Buffett to Captain Tony to Sloppy Joe, he's en­gulfed him­self in Key West lore.

"Mike has an active mind and Key West is good at keeping it occu­pied," says Hal Mumme, a vet­eran coach who gave Leach his first football job. "It has so many of the things he likes: rollerblade, fish­ing, the beach, and all the pirate lore you could want."

His wide range of inter­ests and unconventional style earned Leach the ec­centric tag long ago. "He's just an out­side-the-box type of per­son," says his friend Kyle Whitting­ham, the head coach at the Uni­versity of Utah. Leach is also one of the few football coaches who nev­er actually played the game. He earned a law degree from Pep­per­dine Uni­versity and decided rel­atively late he'd pre­fer to coach.

"He'd be un­usu­al in any sphere of life," says au­thor Michael Lewis, who pro­filed Leach five years ago and has re­mained friends. "If he was a lawyer, he'd be an un­usu­al lawyer. But as a football coach, he's a very un­usu­al football coach."

Sharon didn't know how living in Key West full-time would suit Leach. Living here is differ­ent than vis­iting. She is thrilled to have her husband around, but she worried about how he'd fill that hole.

"He's not a guy who relaxes," she says. "When we'd take a vacation and vis­it the beach, you'd nev­er find him laying on the beach."

'Tearing him in­side out'

By now, Leach is fa­mil­iar with ev­ery corner of purgatory. Not just the back roads. He knows which ho­tel lobbies to cut through. Which restaurant patios have a wa­ter cool­er. Which stores al­low you to pop in, use the fa­cilities and exit with­out drawing a glare.

"You got to kind of know the deal," he says.

He's walked almost ev­ery inch of the is­land. On Duval Street, where the soundtrack has just two songs — rev­elry and debauch­ery — Leach weaves through the tourists and points out landmarks. "Need a lit­tle ink? Go here," he says. "Need a pierc­ing? This is your spot."

Leach seems to be enjoying him­self. He knows this pe­riod of his life is un­usu­al for a col­lege coach. Most coaches don't get a break. Most don't want one.

But this is Leach's re­ality. While col­lege coaches across the country have been im­mersed in spring practices, Leach's week­ends read like a bucket list. He spent a week on the movie set of "Battle­ship" with di­rector Pe­ter Berg in Los An­ge­les. He hunted wild pigs from a he­licopter above south Texas. He spoke at MIT's Sloan Sports An­alyt­ics Confer­ence in Boston and also to lawyers in Arkansas.

He vis­its France to consult for an American football team called the Flash de La Courneuve. And in the United States, he went to the Se­nior Bowl and the NFL scout­ing combine, and helped stage a new col­lege all-star game in Phoenix. He does a dai­ly Sirius ra­dio show, broadcast from Key West, and pro­vided anal­ysis for televi­sion broadcasts of col­lege games. He launched a Twitter account and his autobi­og­raphy should hit shelves this summer.

So, is he con­tent? Sad? Angry? Empty?

"He doesn't show it much. Maybe it's the atmo­sphere in Key West. I don't know," says Jerry Hughes, the longtime coach at Key West High. "But I know when he's alone, watch­ing a game or what­ev­er, there's no doubt that the thought's go­ing through his head: 'I got to get back out there.' "

"He's such a pleas­ant guy to be around," Hughes con­tinues. "That's why I hate see­ing what's hap­pened to him. I do be­lieve it's tearing him in­side out. He wants to coach. That's his love."

'Don't have huge regrets'

Leach had hoped he'd only have to sit out one year. In­stead, he's about to miss a sec­ond. At Texas Tech, he was 84-43 in 10 seasons. He won five bowl games. He graduated more student-athletes than any oth­er coach at a public uni­versity. As far as cre­dentials go, he was em­inently more quali­fied than oth­ers who've re­cently been hired.

Of the 22 men who took head coach­ing jobs since last sea­son ended, 13 had nev­er been at the helm of a divi­sion I team. Of the re­main­ing nine with expe­ri­ence at the top lev­el of col­lege coach­ing, only four had posted ca­reer winning records.

"Mike is a cre­ative guy, very intelligent," says Philadel­phia Eagles Coach Andy Reid. "You add that in with his pas­sion for the pass­ing game, for offensive football, you come up with a pretty good football coach."

Those close to Leach agree that he'll land a job once his court cases have reached a conclu­sion. But it's not clear when that might be.

Less than a year af­ter negotiating a five-year, $12.7 million con­tract exten­sion with him, Texas Tech fired Leach on Dec. 30, 2009, for "in­subor­dination" related to charges lev­ied by one player, Adam James. When James, son of ESPN broadcast­er Craig James, suffered a concus­sion, Leach had members of his staff put the player in a dark room dur­ing two practices. That's about all the two sides agree on.

Leach says he was taking pro­tective measures to treat a concus­sion suffered by a cod­dled player. James con­tends he was be­ing cru­elly pun­ished. "I hon­estly feel like a pris­oner, a slave," James said in a depo­sition.

Last year, Leach sued Texas Tech and the James fam­ily and filed a sep­a­rate suit against ESPN, the first to report his al­leged infractions. The sec­ond suit has barely moved, but there's been plenty of action surrounding the first, which seeks more than $12 million from his for­mer employer.

The Court of Appeals for the 7th Dis­trict ul­ti­mately ruled Leach doesn't have the right to sue Texas Tech. The school's attor­neys argued that as a state entity, Texas Tech enjoys "sovereign im­munity," which means it can only be sued with permis­sion from the state leg­is­la­ture. Leach filed an appeal to the Texas Supreme Court in March. He's al­leg­ing the uni­versity is hiding behind an anti­quated law, us­ing James's accu­sa­tions as an excuse to escape an expensive con­tract.

Leach vis­ited Austin re­cently and chat­ted with Craig Ei­land, an attor­ney who rep­resents the 23rd Dis­trict in the Texas House of Rep­resentatives. He'd hired a lobbyist to convince the state leg­is­la­ture that it should al­low him to sue Texas Tech — not an easy propo­sition consid­ering Leach seeks more than $12 million and the state is grappling with a $27 billion bud­get short­fall. Ei­land lis­tened and proposed a bill that would al­low Leach to sue, but it nev­er made it out of committee. The state's attor­ney general is looking into the mat­ter.

"I don't care who wins," Ei­land says. "What I care about is making sure the state has a process it fol­lows so that people can con­tinue to consid­er con­tracting with the state. If we don't, then none of our football, bas­ketball, baseball coaches have a con­tract. If it's not enforceable, you don't have a con­tract."

Even if a court does hear Leach's case, the oppo­sition isn't too worried.

"I've been do­ing this a long time and nobody can pre­dict what 12 people are go­ing to do," says Dicky Grigg, Texas Tech's attor­ney, "but yeah, I'm very confident in our case."

Grigg said no schools have con­tacted Texas Tech to discuss details of the case, including Mary­land, the lone program to se­riously consid­er hiring Leach.

Mary­land flew Leach to Col­lege Park in late December, then shocked its fans by in­stead hiring Randy Edsall, who com­piled a 74-70 record in 12 seasons at Connectic­ut.

Asked about the Terps' job, Leach is measured. "I think it's a great opportunity," he says. "I think it's a sleeping gi­ant, a team that could win the ACC. I don't have huge regrets that things didn't work out.

"I could've pro­vided a lot of things that they needed — fill­ing the sta­dium, sell­ing tickets, graduating players, keeping them out of trou­ble and winning a lot of football games. No question about that. But they needed to go with the guy they wanted."

'Prove . . . they made a mis­take'

Reid spotted it last fall when Leach vis­ited the Eagles, and Whitting­ham no­ticed it this spring when he watched the Utes practice in Salt Lake City. It was vis­ible in Leach's eyes and au­dible in his voice.

"He's certainly not bored and he's staying busy," Whitting­ham says. "But coach­ing is in his blood, so ul­ti­mately, that's what he needs to be do­ing."

If Hem­ingway was a man with­out a country, Leach is merely a coach with­out a team. Lewis, the au­thor, says Leach "isn't good at be­ing idle. It's not his nat­ural state. He doesn't know about what he's mis­s­ing. It's sort of like, he can try to dis­tract him­self enough, but he doesn't know how much he misses it."

Leach is convinced he's a better lead­er now than he ev­er was at Texas Tech. A coach can spend so much time focus­ing on a player's foot or hip, he doesn't always ap­preciate the big­ger pic­ture.

"I re­member back in law school, it was such a scramble to get your grades, go to class, read all the stuff. But I think I knew more about law two years af­ter I got out than I did the day I fin­ished," Leach says. "It all sort of as­sembled it­self."

Leach takes off his flip-flops as he walks barefoot through the sand, making his way to a seat at Louie's Backyard, where Buffett used to belt songs into the night. He or­ders a tea and watches the jet skis zip around the sailboats.

"He might look like he's having fun on the out­side, but all head coaches have egos," says Hughes, his friend. "It's not a bad thing. I know he has an ego and that he wants to get back into coach­ing and prove to people that they made a mis­take."

As the sun sets, the silver wa­ter blends seam­lessly into a metallic sky. Leach loves it here. But he knows while par­adise might be perma­nent, purgatory is not.

This lit­tle is­land has a way of attracting col­orful char­ac­ters, and Leach meets new ones ev­ery day.

"Some people get screwy," he says. "Just from my un­of­ficial inter­views, they'll get down here and they'll feel they're cut off and out of it — to the point where it's almost kind of traumat­ic. All of a sudden, they go, 'I got to get out of here. I'm trapped.' And they can't wait to get back."

The sun sinks into the ocean. As Leach walks home, all across the is­land, beer taps are flowing and Duval Street starts to feel like car­nival. Some days, purgatory can feel like heav­en; oth­er days like hell. But it's nei­ther.

For Leach, it's just a wait­ing room with palm trees.